Israel’s war on Palestinians is a war on facts

To the world, Ahmad Jarrar was a “terrorist” who murdered “innocent” Israeli Rabbi Raziel Shevach near his settlement outside of Nablus last month.

Shevach was remembered in the Israeli and American news media as “a good-hearted family man” and “the father of six children” living quietly in his home in the Israeli settlement of Havat Gilad.

But what they don’t tell you is that Shevach represents a movement of hatred that has spread through the occupied West Bank through settlements built illegally on lands stolen from Palestinians. Shevach is memorialized as a leader of the Israeli settler movement, which is responsible for destroying millions of dunum of Palestinian farmland forcibly confiscated — stolen — from Palestinian civilians.

Many settlers are heavily armed and are allowed to carry automatic weapons. When Israeli settlers kill Palestinians who protest against the theft of their farmlands, even peacefully, the settlers are celebrated by Israel’s government, Israel’s media and some American news media as heroes. The Palestinian civilians they murder are demonized as “terrorists,” “Jew-haters,” “anti-Semites,” and “anti-peace.”
But, beyond the slanted, pro-Israel headlines is an ugly truth about the settlers, Israel’s government and the biased news media. They are lying to cover up their own crimes. They did not tell you that Jarrar, the 22-year-old accused of killing Shevach, was orphaned in 2000, when Israel murdered his father. And they surely didn’t tell you that, in the weeks after Shevach’s killing, Israeli soldiers were given permission to go after anyone who got in the way of their search for Shevach’s killer.
The biased Israeli and American news media didn’t tell you that Israel’s government has tried to kill Jarrar several times in the past and that maybe, just maybe, Jarrar was reacting to the violence against him and all that is ugly in Israeli policy in the West Bank when he killed Shevach.
I don’t support violence. I don’t support killings or murder. I support non-violence. But I also demand accuracy and accountability.

Biased news media is complicit in allowing the Israeli government to hide some truths and exaggerate others, meaning the Palestinian victims of settlers and security forces are viewed as ‘terrorists’ all over the world.